


Sacrifice

by hellomiho



Series: Lysandra becomes Aelin AU [2]
Category: Throne of Glass Series - Sarah J. Maas
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-27
Updated: 2018-12-27
Packaged: 2019-09-28 10:27:34
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,385
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17181227
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/hellomiho/pseuds/hellomiho
Summary: Terrasen needs an heir.





	Sacrifice

“Drink with me.”

Aedion turned around to face the woman who had just spoken, two bottles of wine irreverently dangling from each of her hands.

Raising his eyebrows, the general nodded to the bottles, “Got the good stuff, what’s the occasion?”

Aelin stared at him blankly, “I’m the queen. I don’t need an occasion.”

Without sparing another look at him, she turned around and strode in the direction of her chambers.

“Wipe that shit eating grin off your face and follow me or else I’m going to drink both of these myself.”

* * *

They sprawled out on one of Aelin’s long, plush couches and passed the wine between them, taking swigs straight from the bottle. It felt like an eternity had passed since that night in her old apartment when they had done the same and had their first real conversation, sharing stories of their scars and battles.

Aedion voiced this thought and the queen rolled her eyes before throwing a cushion at him.

“You’re a sad drunk.”

He chuckled and a calm silence fell over them as they continued to share the wine. At one point, they finished the first bottle and moved onto the second, a pleasant haze slowly overtaking Aedion's mind.

“But everything has changed since then,” Aelin mused softly and she seemed to startle at Aedion’s response, as if she hadn’t expected him to hear her words.

“Not everything, we’re here together right now, aren’t we?” he said.

Her smile didn’t reach her eyes and she silently examined the wine bottle in her hands before passing it back to him and hesitantly saying, “It’s selfish, but a part of me wishes we could go back to those days.”

After uttering those words, she seemed to withdraw into herself, even as she let out a lazy sigh.

Rather than reacting with outrage as she had half expected, Aedion mused with a contemplative look on his face.

“Sometimes, it doesn’t feel real. I half expect that I’ll wake up, that this will all just have been a dream and we're actually still fighting Erawan or escaping from the King of Adarlan," he paused and grinned at Aelin in an effort to lift the suddenly serious mood, “And what scares me most about that is that we’d still be in your cramped apartment.”

“My apartment was perfect. It’s just that you’re rutting huge,” Aelin retorted, snatching the wine from him.  

“It was small. I could hear and smell _everything_ ,” Aedion pointedly responded.

She refused to blush, “You’re welcome for the free show.”

“I did not need to know you or Rowan that intimately.”

Aedion turned to his cousin after a long moment during which she had remained uncharacteristically quiet instead of responding to his jibe.

“What if I needed you to?”

“What?” Aedion asked with a bemused laugh.

Aelin mulled over how best to say what was weighing on her mind before her eyes began to search his face for his reaction and she carefully spoke.

“Rowan and I can’t have children.”

It was his turn to remain silent now, as he processed her sudden confession. She sucked on her teeth before starting over, desperate for him to understand.

“Terrasen needs heirs.”

A look of understanding entered Aedion’s face as he heard the insecurity in her feigned nonchalant voice, and even though he wasn’t exactly well-versed with this kind of subject, he gently placed his hand over hers.

“With the way you and Rowan rut like rabbits, you’ll have babies running around the palace in no time,” he said, with a wink.

But Aelin didn’t laugh at his crude attempt at comforting her as he had expected.

“I don’t have time,” she snapped before forcing herself to take a breath and continue with a more composed demeanour.

“They took my future. I don’t have time,” Aelin repeated with a pained look on her face, “and with Fae, there’s such a small chance of conceiving.”

Aedion listened to her, a look of concern growing on his face.

“I cannot risk dying without an heir.”

“What are you saying?”

“You,” she licked her suddenly dry lips, “you are the only man I can trust.”

And Aedion found himself completely sobered despite the exorbitant amount of wine he had consumed. He backed away from her on the couch, his mind racing to make sense of what his cousin was saying.

“I’m, I’m, I’m half Fae,” he sputtered in protest, not quite sure what he was saying but needing to say something. 

“Rowan’s full-blooded,” she countered easily.

“Rowan,” he latched onto the name like a lifeline, “Rowan-”

“Understands that Terrasen will always come first,” Aelin said seriously, with suspiciously wet eyes as she slowly came to straddle him on the couch.

The brief moment of sobriety had left him, and although he would have done anything, given anything to get her away from him, he found his senses muddled by the wine. He managed only to get into a half upright position, Aelin still on top of him.

“I, I, I can’t,” he whimpered at last, pleading.

“Please.”

Her eyes stared at him, unwilling to look away as she let out a whispered plea. These were eyes that mirrored his in every possible way (they had always looked similar enough to be twins instead of cousins) but they somehow looked foreign in that moment: ashamed but steely and unwavering.

This was his _cousin._  This wasn't just another woman who had paid to sleep with the Whore of Adarlan, this wasn't a random woman from his parties that he had needed to sleep with to maintain his reputation as a hedonistic traitor; this was his cousin. This was  _Aelin_. He'd known her since she was a baby; he'd grown up training so that he would become her sword and shield and believing he would take the blood oath to her.

He had felt sickened upon finding out that a betrothal between Aelin and him had once been considered, but this, this was so much worse.  

A slimy and reviling feeling filled him, different from the sensations brought upon by his inebriation, and Aedion fought the urge to become physically sick.  

This was _Aelin._

He remembered the stubborn toddler he had so fiercely loved and sought to protect when he had been but an orphaned child. He remembered the woman who had come to rescue him with a wicked and vicious turn to her lips, when they had finally been reunited after all of those years.

He remembered the queen who had never let her strong demeanour falter, even when Erawan and his forces had been so close to destroying everything. She had never once asked him first for his help despite how much he wanted her to rely on him, always shouldering the burden herself with an easy, confident smirk.

And yet here she was now, looking like her heart was shattering just as his was, making her first and only request of him. 

And Aedion broke.

He slowly fell back onto the couch, his arms lying limply by his sides.

“Do you understand what you’re asking of me?” he asked, his eyes clenched shut and his voice trembled as he finally whispered.

“I hate you… so much.”

Aelin shut her own eyes although a tear still escaped and trailed down her cheek.

“I know...I know.”

* * *

She walked into her innermost private chambers after having bid one of her guards to take her drunk cousin back to his own chambers, and it was only after she closed the door, that she began to rush like a madwoman to the large vanity.

She fell to the ground, her knees finally giving out beneath her even as her hands searched frantically inside a drawer, her nails scratching the wooden bottom in their hurry.

After what seemed like an eternity, her hands finally clasped a small velvet box and she opened it with trembling fingers. A golden ring lay inside, with engravings of a ghost leopard and a key.

She clutched it tightly to her chest as if willing the ring to embed itself, past the fabric of the dress, past the skin on this body, and onto her bleeding heart.

Ugly, shoulder-wracking sobs escaped from her, but even now, she did not shift back.

“I did it Aelin, I did it.”

**Author's Note:**

> “Aedion flinched as if he’d been struck. ‘And when were you going to reveal this? Before or after I thought I was taking my gods-damned cousin to bed for whatever reason you concocted?’” (EoS 672 )
> 
> Honestly, I don't think I'll ever get over how Aelin and Lysandra planned for Lysandra to become Aelin upon Aelin's death. It's such a morbid and sacrificial plan and I'm absolutely fascinated/fixated on it.
> 
> I actually gave quite a lot of thought as to how the scenario I wrote would come to be, so I'll probably write another oneshot with all of that (like how Lysandra came to take Aelin’s place, why Rowan and Aedion can’t tell that it’s Lysandra despite the no powers/mating bond, and etc.). 
> 
> Side note: In case anyone's still confused, Aedion didn't really sleep with Aelin so there was no incest. He slept with Lysandra pretending to be Aelin, because as mentioned in EoS, they need heirs that can pass off as being Aelin's. 
> 
> Also, after what happened, Lysandra fixed all of their clothes and pretended that Aedion had just gotten overly drunk. Therefore, the guard wouldn't be suspicious when she asked him to take Aedion to his own chambers.
> 
> Anything else still unclear will most likely be elucidated in the aforementioned future oneshot.


End file.
